Chuseok, A week of celebrations

This week the Koreans celebrated Chuseok which is equivalent to our Thanksgiving celebration. As missionaries, our celebration started on Monday when the sister missionaries decorated the chapel annex to celebrate the birthday of one of the elders and one of the soldiers. It was also a farewell party for Kara, a soldier they taught and baptized. We had a non-member soldier join us for our evening together. Wayne and I used a youth video with a football theme (filmed at Logan High School) to guide our scripture study.

Tuesday we served at the USO in the morning and I met with my Korean student in the evening to help her prepare for the exams she will take to apply for nursing school. She is cute to help me with my Korean conversation after our English lesson. She always giggles at my Korean. 

On Wednesday we returned to the USO for their annual celebration of Chuseok for the soldiers. The women in the picture are the women we work with dressed in their traditional holiday attire. The food is authentic Korean fare including the rice cakes and kimchi you see at the left of the picture. The other dishes are ones generally enjoyed by Americans. Just the sheer number of different dishes reminds us of all the plates we put on our own Thanksgiving table. We enjoyed the meal although the kimchie took revenge on Elder Anderson later. He keeps eating the kimchi thinking it will be okay.

Thursday is our fellowshipping night where we generally meet at the food court on the base, purchase something to eat, and visit together until it is time for the missionaries to be back in their apartments. The wife of our branch president wanted to share Chuseok with the missionaries so we shifted the venue to our apartment. She drove for 30 minutes to bring traditional Korean food for us to enjoy. She brought her sister to help her prepare the soup and rice cakes but didn’t eat with us because they had already eaten with their family. They did eat the cinnamon crumb cake I had baked for dessert. Korean desserts are not made with white sugar and are not sweet. We are told it is because they don’t like sweet foods, but I noticed her sister ate a second piece of cake before they washed their dishes and left.

           On Friday we were on a train before 6:30 a.m. to attend a mission conference in Seoul. . No one was using suit coats so Wayne hung his on a coat rack and asked me to help him remember to put it back on before we left for home.

            The conference began in a clearing in the woods above the mission home. There were birds in the trees and a very small squirrel scurrying about high above us. Two elders played hymns as a duet on a keyboard and violin as prelude. Elder Sonksen likened the place to the sacred grove where Joseph Smith received his first vision and talked a bit about the history of the church in Korea. 

Next, we hiked to the top of the mountain immediately behind the mission home and were rewarded with wonderful views of the city. It wasn’t really a hike, more like a walk up a steep road and a walk along a path with stairs and walkways. My leg did well. The, Sister Sonksen shared her perspective on the importance of the Book of Mormon in another short meeting. She asked the missionaries what their favorite word was in the Book of Mormon and the answers were quite profound. Everyone ate lunch. There were games for the missionaries. They did some arm wrestling competition with lots of cheering, a traditional Korean game with sticks, and a contest to see which four people could jump the rope together the longest. The missionaries really had fun with the jumping. Even I tried and lasted two jumps and my leg said that wasn’t something it did anymore.

            They ended the conference with a movie on Joseph. It was very powerful and left me crying at the martyrdom. President Sonksen had the missionaries reflect on their feelings and left them with a challenge to go forth and be obedient missionaries.

That was the end of the planned activities. Wayne and I grabbed our two backpacks and headed for home but the bus we caught didn’t go to our train station. We got off at a place we thought we could walk back to that station and fortuitously happened upon a small gathering of Koreans dancing in traditional costumes. It was a fun cultural experience we would have missed if we had caught the train as planned. On the way to the station I remembered Wayne’s suit coat. We made our way back to the mission home for the coat.

We were able to retrace our route to Line #1 and boarded the first train heading north. It wasn’t a train that went very far north but the man sitting next to us told us he would help us transfer trains. He was good for his word and we got on another train that came closer, but still not all the way home. The man who came to our rescue the second time waited with us for about ten minutes on the train platform and visited with us about the mountains behind us at that station. He spoke quite good English. A woman about Mary’s age came to wait for the train and I motioned for her to sit next to me. She immediately began chattering with me. I understood much of what she was saying. We talked about how many children we had and where we lived. She had a bright smile and chattered a stream. Both of these Koreans noted that we were missionaries for our church. I don’t think it was coincidence that we forgot the jacket and had to change trains so many times. We seem to have our longest exchanges with Koreans when we have need of their help.

Today was a beautiful fall day so we decided to venture up Soyosan Mountain. There is a lovely walking path with lots of old people who walk to this temple. This woman noticed my name tag and knew that I was a Mormon. We visited a bit, all in Korean, before she stopped to fill her water bottles at the spring. It is a temple that dates back to the late 400s but was destroyed with the Korean War and recently rebuilt.

 The temple consists of this gate and then the statues set up inside a shallow cave. A waterfall comes off the mountain beside it. From the temple there is a labyrinth of trails that all end on top of the mountain. We didn’t do the final assent today.

 We did see this huge toad and women scouring under the leaves for these mushrooms they sold along the walkway. We came home and warmed Korean food from the USO.

Sundays are always busy with two hours of church at the chapel above the tire store in Jihang and then sacrament meeting at the base chapel followed by a fellowshipping lesson and institute at our home. We are enjoying our institute class even though we have only one student. The Lord cares about “the one.” What a blessing to be a missionary here in the north of South Korea.